International infectious disease expert talks COVID vaccination, disparities in TTUHSC event
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Infectious disease expert Dr. Peter Hotez kicked off the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Graduate School of Biomedical Science Department of Immunology & Molecular Microbiology Spring Seminar Series this week with his webinar titled “COVID Vaccines: Science vs. Anti Science."
Hotez is one of two lead researchers of COBREVAX, a COVID-19 patent-free vaccine that is safe, effective, affordable and currently approved for use in India.
He is also dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine for the Baylor College of Medicine, co-Director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and professor of pediatrics and molecular virology.
Hotez discussed various topics, including rising COVID-19 deaths - largely among unvaccinated people statewide and nationally - the importance of global vaccination to prevent more variants, and answered questions from the audience during his presentation.
Hotez highlighted that despite vaccinations for COVID-19 being widely available, a tragic number of deaths are still occurring in the United States.
“300,000 of those deaths occurred since June when the vaccines were widely available,” Hotez said. “These are individuals who did not have to lose their lives. Of the 300,000 deaths, roughly 250,000 people refused to get vaccinated.”
He added that 25,000 Texans since June have needlessly lost their lives because they refuse to get vaccinated.
Hotez also pointed out that variants continue to arise out of large unvaccinated populations globally, like Delta rose out of India and Omicron out of southern Africa. This, he said, is the price we're paying for not vaccinating the southern hemisphere.
Hotez added that anti-vaccination movements arise from false assertions, and it is important to figure out a way to convince people to get vaccinated.
“So we don't have this catastrophic loss of life and people piling into our emergency rooms in intensive care units,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Infectious disease expert talks COVID vaccination at Texas Tech event
